A recently published paper on the neuroscience of drug addiction raises ethical and policy issues arising out of addiction. The paper concludes social and economic circumstances contribute towards the propensity of individuals to become addicted.

Data obtained within HBP’s brain atlas work has contributed to the discovery of a "short distance" brain connectivity deficit that is associated with a lack of social interaction and empathy.

"Getting to know our new collaborators personally definitely helped us to establish working cooperation”, Zdenek Straka, an early career researcher of the RobotBodySchema project, explained to FECYT, coordinator of the SCOPE project.

1 November 2018 marked the launch of the European Brain Council (EBC)-coordinated EU project The European Brain Research Area (EBRA). A project to streamline and better co-ordinate brain research across Europe while fostering global initiatives.

HBP Scientific Research Director Katrin Amunts held the first impulse statement on “AI in Science” in the Falling Walls Circle event held in Berlin on November 8th. 

In HBP,  the team of Gregoire Courtine studies basic mechanisms of electrical spinal cord stimulation in a virtual experiment setup on the Neurorobotics Platform. They also developed personalized computational models for each patient that guided the placement of the electrode arrays over the spinal cord.

Members of the International Brain Initiative (IBI) have met in La Jolla, California following the historic agreement to establish the IBI that was made on the 8 December 2017, in Canberra Australia. The meeting was attended by HBP’s leader of the Neuroinformatics Platform Prof. Jan Bjaalie.

From 6-7 February 2019, the 3: HBP Student Conference will take place at Ghent University, Belgium. This annual event, organised by early-career researchers for early-career researchers, aims to encourage collaboration and scientific exchange across the various research fields relevant to the Human Brain Project.The programme includes keynote lectures by distinguished scientists from within and outside the Human Brain Project, student presentations and poster sessions as well as social events.

Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier was one of the founders of the Human Brain Project, and a member of the project’s executive management board, the Directorate, during the ramp-up phase. He was also Co-chair of the Project’s scientific leadership body - the HBP Science and Infrastructure Board (SIB) - responsible for Infrastructure Operations and, ex-officio, Infrastructure Operations Director. Last week, on Wednesday 24 October, Professor Meier - who had been ill for some time - suddenly passed away. Below his colleagues at the Human Brain Project pay tribute to Karlheinz Meier’s extraordinary contribution to the Human Brain Project.